Hello again all,

We arrived in Sepilok,sandakan today to see the orangutans and the rainforests.

Our last night in Kota kinabalu provided us with our first real rain storm...but that didn't deter us from venturing out to grab some traditional Malaysian food by the sea! Very delicious & cheap!

We decided to have an early night to make the hotel breakfast time(which admittedly,we'd failed to do - since I'm always the early bird, I place full blame on lauras shoulders) and prepare ourselves for the flight...we both hate the last minutes rush to the airport!

We got to sandakan after a speedy 40minute flight and driven by a nice guy who we called Roy, (we unsure whether that actually was his name) to our hotel in Sepilok with much welcomed ease,giving us plenty of time to marvel the surrounding town and increase our levels of excitement as we approached the rainforests!

We got to our hotel,which is a pleasant and quaint place with beautiful flowers,plants,a swimming pool (with shark slide) and best of all; only 5 minutes walk to the nearest orangutan sanctuary.

Time seemed to be on our side today as no time had we got into our room and threw our backpacks down it was actually feeding time at the nearest sanctuary (just noticed I keep calling it 'sanctuary' but it's actually 'rehabilitation centre'...like they've got some sort of problem.

We jogged over to the centre and we could tell we were entering the rainforest as the humidity & temperature increased...probably didn't help that I was wearing jeans & a shirt.

Straight away we saw our first orangutan, mother and baby peacefully and obviously first ones there at the feeding platform,leisurely eating the bananas...until a horde of monkeys (think they're called pig tailed macaque???) came out of nowhere and invaded the platform (some baby ones clinging to their mother which Laura particularly found adorable).

We watched them devour the bananas as the one orangutan and her baby that was there made it's way over to the otherside of the platform and watched them (and probably all us tourists) from above,probably cursing under her breathe.

They were the only animals we saw,other than a few butterflies and one (which laura saw and pointed out first,was a black squirrel,which to our amusement took quite some time going back and forth along the ropes,deciding whether or not to join the monkeys for food...it didn't in the end. Coward.

Must note,this is the first time we've fully utilised te video camera since we set off (took some quite getting used to and some of you may see some amateurish footage for hong kong, but you'll be glad to hear we (more me,than Laura) appear to have the hang of it now! Thanks to Alan,Matt,kit & Ace.

After it seemed no other orangutans would appear we made our way back to the hotel to have a walk around the grounds & decide our next excursion in the area.